Women 35+ Why You’re Fasting and Not Losing Fat, Fix It Today (Food Timing Plan Inside)

Welcome back to the body recomposition revolution. I am so. Happy to be back. Recording. I had a lengthy snafu with my microphone but now I have a new one and I know way too much about microphones at this point. But hey, I'm sure it will serve me well in the future. Today we. Are talking about fasting for women specifically? I can't imagine a better topic to we will come back to because fasting in regards to women and their fat loss and their hormonal balance has been a contentious topic. My favorite to cover and I have.

Covered it I. Kid you not. I have researched this topic for weeks. And weeks and weeks taking notes and notes and notes and you would not believe how much contradictory information there. Is out there for. Women from a huge sources of information. I won't name names, I'm sure you can guess. So as a former teacher, I always start my. Episodes off with a. Learning objective and today's learning objective is after. This episode. Women will understand how eating windows are different from fasting and how eating at the right times.

Will help you drop. Fat while supporting lean muscle and hormone balance. I am very guilty of shutting down the suggestion or the idea. Of. Fasting. When my female clients bring it up to me, they'll say things like, Oh. I. Fasted in the past and it really helped me drop fat. OK, I understand. Yes, I'm sure it did. But ultimately there is so much more to it than that especially. After age 35. Because as we know, as as I've said many times, we are different after age 35. I'm learning this the hard way every single day of my life at 37.

As we start this episode, I. Want to bring U2 different terms? The first term is an eating window and the second term is fasting. There's a difference. We're going to start with an eating window O an eating window. Is a structured period of. Time during the day when? All of your. Food is being consumed, it's your normal, regular, balanced meals and it's enough calories to meet your body's needs. You might be in a slight deficit during this if our goal. Is to drop fat. But that is taking place during an eating window.

OK, that eating window. Never exceeds 12 hours. For example, you may be eating from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM you. Take your last bite of. Food at 7:00 PM or if you're me, I'm eating from 5:30 AM. To 5:30. PMI am taking my. Last bite of food at 5:30. PM ideally OK friends and family. I know most of the time, so an eating window is the. 12 hour period where all of your. Food, your snacks, your drinks is consumed now, according to research. The best practice for. Women is a 12 hour eating window as I said 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM or 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM which means.

Your first bite of food is at 6. AM your last. Bite of food is. At 6:00 PM, that 12 hour eating window is the most hormonally supportive amount of time for women. So you're avoiding eating late at night and you are always stopping your food within 2. To three hours before. Going to bed, moving on to fasting. Fasting is different from eating windows. Fasting is when you are deliberately skipping meals or going 14 to 16. Plus hours without food. That backfires for women. So the way. Fasting is different is you might say oh I can't eat yet.

I am going 18 hours today fasting you I'm fasting for 18 hours or I'm doing a 24. Hour, fast or God? Forbid you're doing. A 48 hour. Fast, I had a I can't do that. Oh my gosh, fasting. So beyond that 12 hour eating window, fasting. Is hugely. Problematic for women especially. After age 35, all the. Research that is done on women. This new research that has come out been published is on women 35 and above. It shows that women's bodies are so much more sensitive to energy deficits. So when we go too long.

Without food especially. In the morning. That disrupts our hypothalamus. Remember that word hypothalamus? We're going to cover that next. Now, On the contrary, if you are a man listening, none of this involves you, because fasting actually. Works really well. For you if you're trying to drop fat. So anything that I'm saying does not have anything to do. With you but. Please keep listening and and tell all the women in your life because they need to hear this. Maybe not from you, but like, I'm just kidding.

OK, so here's the short and sweet eating window. Versus. Fasting for women 35 plus an eating window is a planned time frame to eat regular meals. Example, you're eating from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM or you're eating from 5:30 AM to 5:30 PM, like me. So my first bite. Of food is at. 5:30 AM and my last. Bite of food is. At 5:30 PM now, fasting is skipping meals or going very lengthy time frames without. Food like. 14 hours and beyond. Why does this matter? Women's bodies need steady energy to support our hormones eating Windows fuel.

The. Body while fasting stresses. Your body. And when your body. Is stressed as a. Woman, you are gaining fat. You're not only gaining fat, but you're losing muscle, and those two things are what contributes to the skinny fat. Look, that is the. Recipe for skinny fat or just being overweight so let's get into the nitty gritty about why women should not fast now again, different from eating windows fasting extensively means beyond 12 to 13 hours without food and when we do. That the. Hypothalamus, there's that word senses an energy shortage.

Before I get into the science, I just want to talk. About your hypothalamus, because it's a big word. And it probably means nothing to you maybe. But when I say hypothalamus, just consider it the. Boss. Of your brain, your hypothalamus. Is the boss the? Boss of your brain. OK, now let me just paint a. Picture of this boss. That lives inside your brain, your hypothalamus. So your boss of. The brain, your hypothalamus is a sensitive, intuitive, all knowing boss. And this boss is in charge of everything, one thing being the thermostat, right?

Everybody has a boss in their house that gets. Real worked up about. The thermostat That boss in your brain is the hypothalamus, and the boss determines how. Hot your blood is the boss decides if. You're hungry or not the. Boss. Determines how you respond to salt protein. Carbs, fat, the boss. Dictates if you need more. Or less. The boss decides. Everything now what happens when a woman trains fasted? And when I say trains, I mean works. Out OK, so let's. Paint a picture again. You wake up in the morning, you're not hungry like most women aren't.

You decide to have some black coffee and you get to the gym. OK, you're going to train fasted. You have no food in your body. And no, coffee does not count. So for women, our boss, the hypothalamus has more areas that are much more sensitive than a man's. Shocker men, their hypothalamus is not nearly as sensitive to that lower calorie intake. So they could go to the gym and train fasted. Not a big deal. But for women above. The age of 30. Five. That is not. A good idea? So for women, when they start doing fasted training, which many women do, this is common because in our mindset we're like, hey, I don't have any food in my system.

So if. I go workout I'm. Definitely going to tap into my fat stores. Wrong. Definitely wrong after. The age of 30. 5 And when I say I've learned this the hard way, I mean that because I I. Really did this for a solid. Year and a half, the last six months have been transformative. So if you're a woman and you get up and you go to the gym, you're fasted your hypothalamus. The boss of your brain is like wait and it senses that you are asking. The body, we'll call it the office, the body to complete these tasks.

These very energy expensive tasks like lifting heavy things and running really. Fast it shoots off. An aggressive message. To your body, it's like, hey, I. Received no fuel to complete. These tasks that she's. Asking us to do therefore, I have no blood sugar. Truly, I received. No protein, no carbs. We are not able to build the muscle that she's tearing apart or even keep the muscle that she wants. We are definitely not going to give up any of the. Fat that we have stored because. We need that, we need to hold on to that.

For dear life. And when I say your hypothalamus is holding on to that. Fat for dear life. I mean that because the hypothalamus is. Wired to protect. Two things, fertility and survival. So when you're hypothalamus, when the boss of your brain. Senses stress that stress. Being training without any sort of fuel, meaning food, your hypothalamus is going to hold on to the fat and it's going to give up the muscle because fat is essential for hormone production and pregnancy while muscle is not. So remember your hypothalamus.

It wants. To protect your fertility. And survival, it's going to hold on to the fat for dear life because you're stressing it out. It's going to give up the muscle because we don't need that. We don't need that to sustain another life in our. Body that is just. How women's brains are wired When women train fasted, the hypothalamus senses this low energy. Availability. So no. Food plus the physical stress which is the. Exercise and that triggers a survival response. So the first thing that happens.

Is you have a cortisol. Rise now I just want to mention that when you wake up within the. 1st 30 to 40. 5 minutes you have a. The cortisol spike, that is just what? Happens. Now what happens when you? Feed the body just a little bit of fuel. Upon that 30 to 45 minutes waking or after waking, that dampens the response. So you're always going to have that. Cortisol spike. In the time frame of. 30 to 40. 5 minutes after waking, but when you give your. Body a little. Bit of fuel, it doesn't need to be a lot it.

Could be 1/2. Scoop of protein in your. Coffee, right? Or just a couple bites of Greek yogurt. Something that signals to the body, hey, hey, she's not going to do this to us again. She's not going to stress us out. Here's some fuel, here's some sustenance. So the first thing that happens when women train fasted? Is you have that. Cortisol spike. Now remember, cortisol is your main stress hormone, OK? This promotes fat storage. Especially around the belly. The second thing that happens is your muscle gets broken down.

Which is. Horrible because your muscle is what's going to give you that lean toned look. I hate the word toned but toned look that everyone talks about. So your muscles going to get broken down because remember your body uses muscle for energy. To protect your reproductive. Function and fat stores since you're not giving it enough fuel to do. That it uses. The muscle, because it doesn't need muscle, it needs fat. To protect your body so it gives. Up the muscle now, this one. I want you to remember the third thing that happens when women train fasted Your metabolism ultimately slows down, your body becomes more efficient at conserving the energy, and it burns.

Fewer calories at rest, so a lot of people. Will start running all the time as their first instinct when they want to. Drop fat, What happens? Your muscle gets broken down. OK, so now you're just kind of looking flabby and unfit. What happens next? Your metabolism slows down, so maybe you could last on this 900. Calorie a day diet for a couple. Weeks and you got really thin and you're like, whoa, this is awesome, but then you gained it all back. Plus some. Well, that's. Because your metabolism slowed down.

That's what happened. It happened to me and in this moment I just want to insert. A little shout out to a few. Of the women clients I have, who are the most? Fit Ferocious 50 plus. Women you'll ever meet in your life and they. Are. Insane in a good. Way like they just push it. And they work hard. And before we started working together, they weren't fueling their bodies enough. And they were wondering like, why am I doing all this work? And I still I. Have this extra fat? Or, you know, I'm not looking toned as soon as they started fueling their bodies appropriately.

They dropped fat like that. And they look incredible. They look incredible. You can see muscle definition in their stomachs. Like LA. And why did that happen? Well, it's because once they started continuously fueling their. Body throughout the day that. Told their hypothalamus the. Boss like hey. You can let go. Of those fat stores. And you know what? We can actually put on muscle. We don't need the. Fat. We can give her the muscle she's requesting by that added stimulus she's placing when she's lifting.

Right, that's that's what's. Spurring the muscle. Growth is you are. Putting a stimulus on your muscles. When you're lifting weights, you're creating these tiny microscopic tears in your muscles. And then when you eat enough protein. That provides the little. Building blocks that are patching up the tiny microscopic tears in your muscles that were created from when you were lifting weights and what happens after. That. Your muscles. Get a little bigger. Every time you are lifting and you create those microscopic tears that are then patched up with the protein you're eating, your muscles get a little more.

Shapely your body. Drops a little more fat, you start looking a little more toned. I hate the word toned and it's like. Wow, I could. Have been eating this much my entire life and is that? I was. I was. You know, fasting while I was training and being hungry all day and then inevitably succumbing to these almost uncontrollable food cravings you get at the end of The Tonight when your hormones. Are out of whack. From fasting OK so if you're like me or any other human being with a. Pulse, you're probably.

Thinking get to it. Lady, what do I do? So here's what you're going to do. If you are a. Woman. 35 years old or? Beyond And if you're not 35 yet, you can. Still follow these protocols. That is going to do nothing but. Good for your body. If you don't do this, you're just a little more resilient than us more seasoned ladies. Now I'm going to have these recommended eating windows, the optimal protocols on APDF in this podcast description. So don't worry, you don't need to get a pen out. Just mentally note these and know that you can access this information in the podcast notes.

Here we go. Well. Number one, ideal daily eating window. This is going to be a 12. Hour. Fasting window and overnight is optimal which means. Best. OK, so 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM, you are not eating. The last piece of food. Enters your mouth before 7:00 PM and your first piece of food enters your mouth after 7:00 AM. Shortly after. Within 30 to 45 minutes, OK, because that's when your cortisol spike happens for the day. This is unstoppable. But having that little bit of nutrients enter your bloodstream dampens.

That cortisol spike, this is good. This is what? We want this is how we get rid of belly fat just a little bit of food. Now for me personally, I'm an early bird. I'm going to get up at about 5:00 AM and my first meal of the day happens around 5:30 AM. And for me personally, some days it's just half a scoop. Of whey chocolate whey. Protein in my iced coffee, off I go. Other days it's. Probably. Maybe a? Quarter cup of Greek yogurt like Faye Greek yogurt with some. Chia seeds, some honey and berries if I'm feeling really.

Artsy other days. If I'm super. Ambitious. I might just boil a couple eggs. Some days it can be quick, some days you can put more time into it. I'm giving more information on some options that you have to eat upon waking in just a moment. OK, so. We are having that 12 hour fasting window overnight is optimal. Now, if you go beyond that 12 hour window of fasting, even to 13, that has been noted to have adverse effects on women's hormonal, hormonal health and metabolism. So remember that. I know it seems, it seems contradictory, like if I go longer, I know I'll lose more belly fat.

Well, in theory and maybe. Before you were 35, that. Worked. It worked for me. It doesn't work now. Just remember that. I had to have. A drilled in my head a million, a million times in the last year #2 meal frequency and protein distribution. So we talked. About this you. Are going to eat within. 30 to 45. Minutes. After you wake up. That dampens that cortisol spike and it. Stabilizes your blood sugar. You're also going to try to distribute your protein evenly throughout the day, so you're shooting for around 30 grams of protein per meal, your total.

Daily. Protein target is about one point 5 grams of protein per pound of ideal. Body weight, yes, that is a. Bit beyond the recommended 1g of protein per pound of body weight. But that's because our bodies are. Different as women after. The age of 35. #3 pre workout nutrition Make sure you're eating about 15 to 25 grams of protein and a little bit of carbs within an hour before you train. That is hugely. Beneficial. We're not training fasted. We're not training fasted. Just remember that. Write it on your hand when you're giving your.

Body that pre workout fuel. That supports the hormonal balance, that improves our workout intensity and that minimizes those cortisol. Spikes, IE gets rid of the body fat. #4 post workout nutrition. Now this one. This one is a game changer for women in that perimenopause phase and beyond. You need you. This is not optional. You need. To have. At least 30 grams of protein plus some carbohydrates within 30 minutes of your workout completion. You're going to see things on Instagram where fitness influencers are saying this isn't necessary and for men, it's not.

For women, especially women after age 35, it is necessary. You have to eat your post. Workout meal you have. To otherwise your whole lift was a waste. Now I just want to close out this episode with some key points that are simplified to really drive this point home that fasting is not ideal for men. One is doctor Stacey Sims famous quote we are not small men and most fasting studies are done on men and the results are then aligned with what women should do. We shouldn't because we're not men. Women's bodies respond very differently, especially when we're active or under stress.

Fasting puts women into energy conservation mode, so when we are not giving our bodies enough food. Especially. Carbs, our brains increase. Fat. Storage and we slow our metabolism this. Is what our bodies? Are meant to do if you're not getting enough. Fuel your body. Will naturally, instinctively, biologically slow your metabolism and hold on to fat for. Dear life, because it's. Mechanism is to. Protect fertility and. Function. Remember that. That's what your body is made. To do if you give it enough fuel.

It will let go of the fat. It will build muscle. So again, fasted workouts do not. Boost. Fat burn for women, For men, Yes, For women, fasted workouts increase hunger, they lower energy output, and they spike stress hormones. That means more cravings. More fatigue. You're exhausted. And more belly fat. I know as women we instinctively want to just move, move, move, eat. Less, Less, less. Keep going, going, going because we think that is going to burn fat. It really doesn't. Do you ever wonder why women.

After age 35. Tend to just kind of get bigger and bigger. Right. It's because we're still. Doing that and after. Age 35 it. Doesn't work. So as a general population now, back when I was a kid, you just noticed that moms, women, they just kind of get bigger with age. Well, that's because we continue to do the same crap. Which is starve ourselves. And our. Body after age 30. 5 responds by hoarding that fat. It doesn't work eating. Before workouts, that works. That supports your hormones. That fuel that you.

Put into your. Body before you. Train it improves your blood. Sugar, it keeps your appetite stable. And it helps you burn more fat after exercise, not less. And I know, I know, it is so hard for me to grapple. With that too, but. Truly, when you. Give your body the. Fuel it needs. It lets go of the. Fat, I promise you. And that is because your hypothalamus the boss. The boss of your. Brain hates fasting, that. Part of your. Brain controls hormones, it controls hunger, it controls everything, and fasting triggers a survival response in women that men do not experience skipping meals.

Equals a higher risk for L. EA now I didn't go over what? L EA is but. Long term fasting or extreme diets? Leads to L EA which is. Low energy availability just means your metabolism is wrecked and when you have. L EA Low. Energy availability. You have a wrecked metabolism. Your cycles wrecked your performance tanks. I went through that for an entire year. Lastly, consistency and early eating wins. Eating earlier in the day. Think like, you know, 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM that syncs with your natural cortisol rhythm, that supports your energy, that supports sleep and it.

Supports fat loss. And I know in the beginning it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. For you to eat. As much. As you should. Be and I'll do an episode on how to calculate those numbers, but it's going to be. Hard to eat. As much protein as you should be eating, but just. Remember after age 35? Your body needs fuel. To let go of fat. Your body needs fuel to build muscle. You need to fuel. Appropriately to body. Recomposition, which means dropping fat, gaining muscle, and finally getting that body you work.

So hard for. And if you've never worked hard hard for it, now is the time. Now is the time. I love teaching all my episodes. Will go over the. Basics of body recomp If this is your first time tuning in, start at episode 1. I talk. All about body recomposition moving into. Episode 2 I talk. About how much protein you should be eating. I really try to simplify that and I feel like I'm OK at. It because I taught. Kindergarten for at least 10 years and then went on to higher grades and everybody learns the same.

We just want it. Put simply, digestible, actionable and that is what I try to do on this. Podcast so. Thank you for tuning in and you will be hearing again from me in a week.

Women 35+ Why You’re Fasting and Not Losing Fat, Fix It Today (Food Timing Plan Inside)

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